SAGINAW, MI — A Saginaw woman will serve time in prison for trying to return a stolen toilet and sink to a Saginaw Township Menards store, and nearly hitting a police officer with her car as she fled.

Saginaw County Circuit Judge Robert L. Kaczmarek on Monday, Feb. 24, sentenced Tracy L. Cole to nine months to 15 years in prison for a March 19 incident at the Menards at State and Weineke.

Kaczmarek sentenced the 50-year-old Cole for three counts of felonious assault (or assault with a dangerous weapon), two counts of resisting and obstructing a police officer, and a single count of third-degree fleeing from a police officer.

Cole did not receive any jail credit because she was on parole at the time of the incident and has been serving a parole violation sentence since her arrest.

Cole last month pleaded guilty to the six charges and, in exchange, prosecutors dropped a charge of armed robbery, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, and recommended that Kaczmarek hand down a minimum sentence not to exceed 19 months in prison.

Saginaw Township Lt. Gary Grauf has said workers at Menards called police about 8:20 p.m. to report that a woman was trying to return a toilet and sink, valued at about $200 each, to the store after the same items were reported stolen from a Menards in Mount Pleasant earlier that same day.

When a township police officer arrived, he noticed a blue Pontiac Aztek in the parking lot with someone sitting inside, Grauf said. The woman inside the Aztek began to honk the horn of the vehicle and the officer asked her to step out of the car as another woman ran out of the store yelling, "go, go, go," Grauf said.

As the driver stepped out of the car, the woman running out of the store slid behind the driver's wheel of the car and sped off, Grauf said, nearly hitting the officer at the scene.

Saginaw police officers caught up with the vehicle in Saginaw and continued the pursuit, briefly losing sight of the vehicle as it sped through residential neighborhoods until they spotted it crashed and smoking in the front yard of a home on Fulton near Bagley on the city's southeast side, Grauf said.

The woman had left the vehicle, and a Michigan State Police trooper found her nearby, Grauf said.

At the time of the Menards incident, Michigan Department of Corrections listed Cole as an absconder from parole.

— Andy Hoag covers courts for MLive/The Saginaw News. Email him at ahoag@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter @awhoag